Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

Positive indicatorsNegative indicatorsOperating characteristicsAnticipatoryReactiveLong-term focusShort term focusChange=opportunityChange=threatAdapts to changeStatic organizationCultureSimple structurecomplex & bureaucraticParticipative management styledirective/autocraticStrong networkinglack of sharing/disconnected functionsOpen flow of informationinformation used as power baseExternal scanning encouragedinsular/lacking external contactsEncourage questioning and reviewclosed mind-set/tunnel visionInnovation/experimentation encouragednon-risk-takingFailures used as learning opportunitiesfailure punishedBoyd’s view on the optimum military organization in both peace time and war mirrors theseinsights. In particular Organic Design and The Conceptual Spiral bear the markings of this schoolof thought.A new viewBoyd and the first stage of the paradigm shiftThus a systems approach, or systems thinking, slowly developed, which is distinctlycontextual. This emergence of systems thinking, growing out of progress in biology in thefirst halve of the 20 th Century, was a profound revolution in the history of Western scientificthought as both Bertalanffy and Capra assert, one which complements the revolution inphysics and was stimulated by it. Bertalanffy remarks that ‘in one way or another we areforced to deal with complexities, with “wholes” or “systems” in all fields of knowledge. Thisimplies a basic re-orientation of scientific thinking’ 177 . Capra remarks that during the secondhalf of the century, the network concept has been the key to the recent advances in thescientific understanding not only of ecosystems, but of the very nature of life 178 . Tosummarize the early contours of the paradigm shift Capra’s list of characteristics suffices.Already in 1975 he laid out several criteria of the ‘new-paradigm thinking in science’ and hehas expanded and restated them in different forms and different editions. Considering thefact that this book was included in the briefing Boyd developed after the essay, Capra’s viewsare important.The first criterion, according to Capra, concerns the relationship between the partand the whole […] the properties of the parts certainly contribute to our understanding ofthe whole, at the same time the properties of the parts can only be fully understood throughthe dynamics of the whole. The second criterion of new-paradigm thinking in science concernsa shift from thinking in terms of structure to thinking in terms of process. Process is primaryand every structure is a manifestation of an underlying process. The third criterion is the shiftfrom objective science to epistemic science. Whereas in the old paradigm scientific177 Von Bertalanffy, p.5. He actually employed the Kuhnian term paradigm to describe the relevanceof system theory, see p.18.178 Capra, (1996), p.35.116